The garden begins
Apr. 19th, 2021 07:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unicorndukeI'm doing a garden at my coworkers place again this year because I had to start seeds before I even got my first covid shot and its less of an obligation to go to her place than my parents place every two weeks. Plus I end up there for work frequently and can tack on an hour of weeding.
I've got a space that was supposed to be a high tunnel but her landlord fucked her over so there's just a nice patch of dirt that is too far from their main field to really grow in, doesn't have irrigation and has a quackgrass problem. It is close enough to their current high tunnel that I can do emergency waterings if there is a drought and things are suffering like I did last year but it's really time consuming and needs to be watched.
Here it is (after I planted, meant to get a before picture oops)
My coworker tilled it Wednesday and then we got over an inch of rain by Friday and I planted Saturday. Not my best idea but it wasn't too wet to be honest. The planter was a little cranky about going through the first and was not happy about grass chunks but I started around 9:30 and had my spring stuff planted by noon. In the picture, I have two rows, about 3 feet apart on the left side of the photo, leaving me about 15 feet width to fit two rows of smaller things like legumes and one row of big vining crops. The corn will be wherever I have room.
I planted peas, garbanzos (many many many of them), a radish, an onion, mustard, poppy, carrots, maybe one or two other things. I do my best to isolate the important things, mainly one garbanzo variety that is extremely difficult to get a hold of. It is Hannan Popbean, that was acquired by Carol Deppe from the USDA GRIN and selected for popping traits and disease resistance. She hasn't been selling seeds for a couple of years now and one company had this particular variety and had a number of seed crop failures. Finally, this year I was able to buy a packet and so that is isolated by 15 feet from the rest of the garbanzos. It really isn't isolated enough but given that they are pretty inbreeding and the flowers are like other legumes and don't open before fertilizing, I'm reasonable confident in that isolation. It also helps that I've had garbanzos much closer and they don't appear to have crossed. I've got a bunch of different colored garbanzos and there would definitely be variability if they crossed.
So that's the planted section.
I also checked in on my babies in the greenhouse. I seeded peppers, true potato seed and sesame back in March and they mostly germinated well. I had one pepper variety that didn't, only 4/10 seeds. Something to keep an eye on. The true potato seed was a surprise. It is notoriously difficult to germinate and they tend to be extremely spindly and weak plants but these are thriving. I potted them up into 4 inch pots to keep their root system happy. Those are super cool and I've been having fun growing them.
That was Saturday, I just checked them this morning (monday) and they've perked up and are looking very good
Here are my peppers and sesame
I also seeded my tomatoes, I only grow paste tomatoes because I really only eat tomatoes as paste or sauce and paste takes up less room. I'm doing a few for evaluating to see how they look and if I like them. I'm growing one out for seed saving (fermenting ew) and one just because I like it. I seeded six varieties in one tray, so 12 plants each. Doesn't seem like much until you realize it's 72 plants. Oops. Plus my coworker is actually growing out a paste variety for seed and I can help her out processing days and get squished tomatoes from that. Ah well.
Either way, I'm happy with how everything is growing and can't wait for frost free days to plant everything else in the field. It looks like a lot of room but boy howdy I can fill a space with plants. I've got one corn variety planned, three squashes, a melon, a cucumber, a watermelon and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Also the other day I made the tiny rice cowpeas instead of the mung beans I've been cooking through and remembered that they taste different. Of course they taste different, they're completely different species. I'm going to grow a lot of cowpeas this year because I like them a lot. Adzuki beans, I'm going to cut back on because I don't like them for eating with rice, but I will be trying to make bean paste at some point. And if I like that, then I might increase the amount I grow.
Yay growing things!
I've got a space that was supposed to be a high tunnel but her landlord fucked her over so there's just a nice patch of dirt that is too far from their main field to really grow in, doesn't have irrigation and has a quackgrass problem. It is close enough to their current high tunnel that I can do emergency waterings if there is a drought and things are suffering like I did last year but it's really time consuming and needs to be watched.
Here it is (after I planted, meant to get a before picture oops)
My coworker tilled it Wednesday and then we got over an inch of rain by Friday and I planted Saturday. Not my best idea but it wasn't too wet to be honest. The planter was a little cranky about going through the first and was not happy about grass chunks but I started around 9:30 and had my spring stuff planted by noon. In the picture, I have two rows, about 3 feet apart on the left side of the photo, leaving me about 15 feet width to fit two rows of smaller things like legumes and one row of big vining crops. The corn will be wherever I have room.
I planted peas, garbanzos (many many many of them), a radish, an onion, mustard, poppy, carrots, maybe one or two other things. I do my best to isolate the important things, mainly one garbanzo variety that is extremely difficult to get a hold of. It is Hannan Popbean, that was acquired by Carol Deppe from the USDA GRIN and selected for popping traits and disease resistance. She hasn't been selling seeds for a couple of years now and one company had this particular variety and had a number of seed crop failures. Finally, this year I was able to buy a packet and so that is isolated by 15 feet from the rest of the garbanzos. It really isn't isolated enough but given that they are pretty inbreeding and the flowers are like other legumes and don't open before fertilizing, I'm reasonable confident in that isolation. It also helps that I've had garbanzos much closer and they don't appear to have crossed. I've got a bunch of different colored garbanzos and there would definitely be variability if they crossed.
So that's the planted section.
I also checked in on my babies in the greenhouse. I seeded peppers, true potato seed and sesame back in March and they mostly germinated well. I had one pepper variety that didn't, only 4/10 seeds. Something to keep an eye on. The true potato seed was a surprise. It is notoriously difficult to germinate and they tend to be extremely spindly and weak plants but these are thriving. I potted them up into 4 inch pots to keep their root system happy. Those are super cool and I've been having fun growing them.
That was Saturday, I just checked them this morning (monday) and they've perked up and are looking very good
Here are my peppers and sesame
I also seeded my tomatoes, I only grow paste tomatoes because I really only eat tomatoes as paste or sauce and paste takes up less room. I'm doing a few for evaluating to see how they look and if I like them. I'm growing one out for seed saving (fermenting ew) and one just because I like it. I seeded six varieties in one tray, so 12 plants each. Doesn't seem like much until you realize it's 72 plants. Oops. Plus my coworker is actually growing out a paste variety for seed and I can help her out processing days and get squished tomatoes from that. Ah well.
Either way, I'm happy with how everything is growing and can't wait for frost free days to plant everything else in the field. It looks like a lot of room but boy howdy I can fill a space with plants. I've got one corn variety planned, three squashes, a melon, a cucumber, a watermelon and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Also the other day I made the tiny rice cowpeas instead of the mung beans I've been cooking through and remembered that they taste different. Of course they taste different, they're completely different species. I'm going to grow a lot of cowpeas this year because I like them a lot. Adzuki beans, I'm going to cut back on because I don't like them for eating with rice, but I will be trying to make bean paste at some point. And if I like that, then I might increase the amount I grow.
Yay growing things!
